How Much Do Rental Properties Make? Real Numbers From Investors

How much do landlords make? Whether you want to own rentals or want to benchmark your property portfolio, this episode is for you. We’ve got four real rental properties with real rent, expenses, and cash flow numbers to share. And this isn’t that fluffed-up “cash flow” number many investors claim—this is the real (as in taxable) cash flow for actual deals owned by friends of the podcast, Amelia McGee and Grace Gudenkauf. Amelia and Grace brought a variety of deals to share—from single-family homes to triplexes, some seller-financed, some with bank loans, some cash-flowing, and others…not so much. They’re sharing real purchase prices, rents, expenses, and cash flow numbers to show you the reality of investing in 2026. We’ll talk about how Grace was able to land a 10% down (cash-flowing) duplex deal thanks to a local bank, the 0% interest seller financing loan Amelia picked up just by having a conversation, a “boring” stress-free rental that pays $250+/month in profit like clockwork, and why one of them sacrificed cash flow for a $42,000 (tax-free) payout! These are real deals in affordable markets that investors still have access to—and we’re sharing exactly how much they make. In This Episode We Cover How much rental properties are making in 2026 (different properties, different financing) The surprisingly obvious way to get a low down payment loan on your next rental Scoring a 0% interest rate using the seller financing strategy Why Amelia pays for her tenants’ utilities instead of billing them back Buy more rentals or pay off your portfolio and why you don’t need to scale big to secure financial freedom Is negative cash flow worth it? The scenario where it can make you wealthy And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1347. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Henry Washington?

  How much do real estate investors actually make in 2026? If you're thinking about buying a rental property or just want to make sure your deals actually match your analysis, we've got good news for you. Amelia McGee and Grace Gudenkauf from Wire are here to share real numbers from their real rental properties. This isn't that fluffed up profit number you hear all the time. This is the actual cash flow they're making on their rentals. You know, like the number you give your CPAs when you're filing taxes. We're going to go through four properties, each with completely different financing structures, giving you the purchase price, rents, expenses, and cash flow. One of these properties is losing money every month while also making Amelia very wealthy. How is that even possible? You're about to find out.

• 0:49Henry Washington?

  What's going on, everybody? It's Henry Washington here, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And back on the show today are Grace Gudenkauf and Amelia McGee, and they brought numbers with them from a few of their properties. So let's jump in. Grace and Amelia, welcome back. You've been guests before, but for those who haven't heard of you or don't know who you are, could you give us a little reintroduction?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yes, thanks for having us back. I feel like we're just old pros on the show at this point. We've been on a few times and both been on the Rookie Podcast, but I'm Amelia McGee. I am based in Des Moines, Iowa, and that's where I live and invest. I've been investing since 2019. I started with a single family flip and have since moved into basic boring long-term rentals and dabbled in every other strategy along the way. But I definitely like the basic long-term rentals. I'm also, like you said, a co-founder of the Wire community. Wire has two I's in it. And then Grace and I are also co-authors of the BiggerPockets book, The Self-Managing Landlord.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  And my real estate portfolio currently consists of about 41 doors, which are a combination of long-term, midterm, and short-term, but the majority are long-term rentals.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  I also invest in Iowa. I'm Grace Gudenkauf, but I currently live in Tucson, Arizona. So I've been doing long-distance real estate for the past three years. And I started as a DIY investor doing BRRRRs with my husband, and that's evolved into mainly new construction between midterm and long-term rentals. And I have probably about 25 doors, all within a five-mile radius in eastern Iowa.

• 2:27Henry Washington?

  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for the reintroduction. We all know you guys are amazing and fantastic. That's why we have you here. And we get to do one of my favorite things, which is look at other people's real estate deals. So Dave and I did something similar where we kind of gave the background of some of our recent deals. So I'm excited to look at your deals. So Grace, let's start with you. Can you tell us about the first deal you have?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yes, this is a long-term rental duplex. It's a side-by-side duplex. It was actually the second property I ever bought. So this is, yeah, long-term rental. It's semi-updated. It's been a pretty easy property that I bought in 2021, maybe. And I actually talked about this on Rookie a long time ago, but I negotiated with the bank to just put 10% down because I was buying into a lot of equity and stabilized tenants. I found it because a local investor had sold it on contract to the tenant, and then the tenant wanted out. So he called me and said, do you want to buy this property? And I said, absolutely. Walked it once and put it under contract with a bank loan.

• 3:38Henry Washington?

  Oh, man. You negotiated with the bank for 10% down. I'm assuming this was a community bank.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  It was a small, local bank that I'd banked at forever.

• 3:47Henry Washington?

  People don't realize that, especially dealing with local community banks, a lot of the structure of the loan, the rates, the terms, the fees, a lot of that is very negotiable. It's not like working with a conventional loan where everything is very rigid, set in stone. Did you bring up the fact to them that like, hey, I've got a lot of equity here? Is there, can I put less down?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I probably heard it on a podcast somewhere. And historically speaking, Amelia and I bank like 95% of our deals at small, local banks, different ones. But you're right, it is so powerful to have a great relationship. But I just called them, said, hey, this is who I am. I really want to put 10% down because of X, Y, and Z. Here's what it's worth. Here's what I'm buying into. And on that same phone call, because it was such a small bank, they got the VP on the line, and he basically gave me a yes. I actually was going for no money down because I thought like there was enough equity and we settled at 10%. And to be super candid, at that time, I couldn't do more. That's what I had. I was just starting investing in real estate, so I had to figure out how to make that work.

• 4:51Henry Washington?

  Okay, so let's hear the numbers on this thing.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Okay, here are the numbers. The rent is $2,150. They're both two-bed, one-baths, so that's about $1,000 each. And my pity is $1,247, so my phantom cash flow is at about $900. However, we all know that phantom cash flow is not what actually happens inside your bank account because life happens. There's a lot of things that you pay for that you maybe don't think about when you first purchase it. So when I pull up my QuickBooks and I look at the last 12 months of finances, here are the real numbers. The rent was $20,354. I had $4,100 in repairs for tenant turnover, and that was because my original inherited

• 5:38Speaker 02

  tenant who stayed there for three years left it absolutely disgustingly. And so my net income was $71.70 and 96 cents, so just over $7,000 for the year. So my actual cash flow, after you take out principal and everything that you spend money on, was $5,304, which comes out to $442 a month. If we go back to that phantom cash flow number, that's telling me I should really be making more like $770 a month, closer to 800. But again, life happens. Sometimes tenants leave things awfully and you have to renovate or do repairs. So all in all, $442 a month for a duplex I put 10% down on, I feel really good about.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  And the current tenants, I feel really good about. So I know moving forward, my numbers will stay looking nicely.

• 6:29Henry Washington?

  I love the term phantom cash flow. I haven't called it that. I often just say cash flow is a myth.

• 6:35Henry Washington?

  I mean the same thing. And I often say that because a lot of investors get into this business, well, most of us got into this business to buy rentals, to generate cash flow, to replace our expenses. And then as you buy rentals, you realize that is very hard to do because you're, yes, you've done the math here and it came out to about $440 a month in cash flow, but that doesn't mean you were getting $440 every month. And so if you're trying to organize your life around some sort of consistent income, it's very hard to do with cash flow.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  What did you buy it for again, Grace? What was the purchase price?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  I did not say that. The purchase price was $135,000.

• 7:21Henry Washington?

  Man, give me one of those.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Well, I bought it in a package deal. It was two duplexes for $255. So I put 10% down on that $255, but it bought me four units. If you think that's inexpensive, wait till we jump over to Amelia.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I know. I'm in an even smaller market. But I think, Grace, I think your market for this particular deal is super realistic for a lot of investors, especially like in Midwestern markets, because it's not crazy, outrageously expensive. I'm not sure how people that are buying $500,000 duplexes are making any money. They probably aren't unless, of course, rent is equivalent to that, but a lot of times it's not. But if you're thinking, okay, how much, how many rentals do I realistically need to be able to quit my job and be a full-time real estate investor? What, you made $5,000 a year off of this property? So if you want to make $50,000, you need 10 of these.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Back into, okay, if each one costs $150,000, you have to put 20% down on each one. That's how much you're going to have to come up with for all the down payments for that. Like, it takes longer than you think and longer than people make it seem online to actually make a full-time income with real estate. You have to have some other source of active income while you're building your portfolio up.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  And another thing, Henry, something Amelia and I have been talking a lot about is like your total return, because the cash flow piece is just one small piece of it. So when we zoom into cash flow, sometimes it looks quite depressing. But then when you zoom back out and you're like, this is actually hitting my bank account with tax benefits and cash flow, and it's hitting my net worth with debt paydown and appreciation, there is a lot that's working there. And then extrapolate that over 10 years, you get further into your amortization, so the debt paydown's bigger. That's really where you see the power. So if you're listening, you got to know that all this over time is what makes it so powerful.

• 9:14Henry Washington?

  Can you tell us the true value of that property was when you bought it?

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Between, again, when I negotiated, it was for the four. So I paid $255 for the four, and I thought they were worth like easily over 300.

• 9:25Henry Washington?

  And what would you say the value of these assets are now?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I just got them appraised, and I didn't, I haven't really put much money into them besides that $4,000 turnover. And I want to say they both appraised at 200, so $400,000 for what I paid $255 for.

• 9:42Henry Washington?

  That's awesome.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  So I was pretty, pretty excited about that. That's five years, though. But, so again, in one year, it's not going to look crazy, but over five, 10, 15, it starts to look better and better.

• 9:51Henry Washington?

  My deals that look the best on paper are the ones I bought right around the same timeframe as you, because now you're starting to really see that equity bump. Rents have increased, and if you've added value by putting money into them, it just kind of grows exponentially. And so this is why people say real estate is a long game. Yes, you want cash flow from day one, if you can get it 100%. You want to shoot for it. But if you're getting cash flow from day one, just wait till year five, and then wait till year 10, and then wait till year 20. It just, it gets better the longer you stay in the game.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  And all in all, I think that these numbers demonstrate that tenants are everything. So you can buy the best property, but if you get the wrong tenant, whoo, that cash flow is gone so quick. And because of tenants, turnover is everything. So maybe think twice about losing a good tenant over a little bit of rent. Obviously, you should increase your rent when you can, but really think that through because turnover and tenants kill your cash flow. So all in all, super happy with this property. Out of all the ones that I bought my first couple of years, this is definitely one of my better properties because of the location, because of the current tenants, and I think a side-by-side duplex is just really hard to beat. But not every property I bought when I first started, I still have.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  So, you know, I'm learning, and these are not things that I learned day one on the property. These are lessons learned over the last five years.

• 11:12Henry Washington?

  Fantastic. Thank you, Grace, for sharing that. I'm excited to continue to hear more. Next up, we've got a deal from Amelia. But before we dive into this one, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 11:24Dave Meyer?

  Before we go to break, if you're someone who's bought a couple of deals and you're looking to scale up your portfolio into something bigger, I have a really exciting announcement for you. BiggerPockets is hosting its first ever conference focused just on scaling up. It's this December. It's coming up soon. This December 5th through 7th in Phoenix, Arizona. We're going to have a full day of programming with speakers like myself, James Daynard, Kathy Fecky, and Devon Kennard, talking about how to scale up and build a sustainable business. Tickets are on sale now, but there are only 100 tickets. So go to biggerpockets.com/conferencesnow and get your ticket today.

• 12:02Henry Washington?

  Here's a strategy that most W2 employees have never heard of. Normally, if you want to write off a rental property against your regular income, you need real estate professional status. That means tracking hundreds of hours a year. Rent to Retirement just launched a program that skips all of that. It's called the STR loophole tenant placement program. Here's how it works. You buy one of Rent to Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties. You set up an Airbnb listing and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent to Retirement then rents the home as a short-term rental to establish it as an STR for the year. No furnishing required, making this the easy button to save five or six figures in taxes this year. And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly

• 12:47Henry Washington?

  minimum to meet. That lets you use a cost segregation study to accelerate the depreciation and potentially write off over $100,000 against your income, even on your first rental. Add in cash back up to 13% of the home price, which exceeds $60,000 on some properties. With this massive cash back incentives, investors are seeing total returns up to 126%. New construction, A-class properties, and inventory is limited. Learn more at biggerpockets.com/retirement or text REI to 33777. Again, text REI to 33777.

• 13:26Dave Meyer?

  Most investors only think about insurance when something goes wrong. A tenant injury, storm damage, loss of rent. Then suddenly, the cheapest policy doesn't feel like the best one anymore. That's why a lot of BiggerPockets investors use steadily for landlord insurance designed specifically for rental properties. Whether you own one property or a growing portfolio, they make it simple to get covered properly. And BiggerPockets Pro members get an extra 5% off their landlord insurance premiums. Visit biggerpockets.com/landlordinsurance to get a quote today.

• 14:00Henry Washington?

  Quick word about a new pro perk you'll want to know about. Aven. If you're a homeowner, there's a good chance you're sitting on equity that you're not using. The problem is tapping into that usually means a cash out refi, a traditional second mortgage, or weeks of paperwork just to get approved. Aven built something different. It's a credit card, but it's backed by your home equity. So you get a lot of the rate benefits of a HELOC with the flexibility of a card you can use anywhere. Rates are typically well below a standard credit card. Approval is fast and mostly online, and you can use it for anything. A renovation, paying down high interest debt, or just have more breathing room in your budget. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, there's an extra reason to check it out. Get approved for the Aven card and you'll get a $400 statement credit after

• 14:43Henry Washington?

  spending $400 on your Aven card. Enough to cover your entire annual Pro membership. Head over to aven.com/biggerpockets to see if you qualify. Aven Financial, NMLS #2042345. Cards issued per 20 license from Visa USA Inc. by Coastal Community Bank, NMLS #462289. Member FDIC. Equal housing lender. Subject to approval. Terms apply. Visit aven.com for details.

• 15:05Speaker 04

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• 15:35Henry Washington?

  All right. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am here with Grace and Amelia, and they are giving us a peek behind the curtain. We're diving into the real numbers of real real estate investments. So this isn't the fancied up version that people give you on Instagram where all you see is the highlights. This is the actual net cash flow that investors are seeing on real deals. Amelia, what you got for us?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yes, this is one of my favorite deals, so I'm excited to share it with you. When I intro'd myself, I said I mostly own long-term rentals, but this property does have one unit that is a short-term rental, a little small but mighty, one bedroom. So the property itself is a triplex. I actually, fun fact about Grace and myself is we've probably purchased, I would say 70% of our portfolios off-market, and we invest separately. That's another little-known fact about us. Everybody thinks that we do everything together, and we do, except for invest in real estate. We each have our own portfolios. But I saw this property driving for dollars. It's in a small town in Iowa, and I'd driven past

• 16:45Speaker 01

  it many times. I noticed that it had three mailboxes. I noticed that it was pretty rundown. It looked like maybe one of the units was ever filled and nobody was living in any of the others. So I looked it up on the Assessor website, found out who owned it. Usually, I try to find the owner on Facebook, but these people were pretty old, like in their 80s. And they had owned it for many, many years, over 30 years. So I figured it was probably paid off in full. I couldn't find them. I went to the old-school phone book at my parents' house.

• 17:18Henry Washington?

  Wait, what's this?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love this part.

• 17:20Henry Washington?

  What's this technology you speak of?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Paper phone book. Called them. No answer. They had an answering machine. Left a voicemail. Asked them basically, hey, are you interested in selling this property? I see, you know, that you own it. They called me back right away, and we set up a showing for the next day. I actually ended up buying it on seller financing at 0% interest. So I put a really large down payment down, and I knew that I was going to do a burr on it. So I knew that within a year, I would be able to pay them off in full. So I wasn't really worried about making monthly payments. I didn't even make monthly payments to them. I made a really large down payment. I think I bought it for around $50,000. So again, small town

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Iowa. But every single unit needed pretty much a full, at least cosmetic renovation. The bones were great, but every unit needed quite a bit of work.

• 18:11Henry Washington?

  I love the hustle. Nobody drives for dollars anymore, it seems like.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  I don't know why.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Ain't nobody looking up the phone book and dialing numbers in the phone book.

• 18:19Henry Washington?

  Right.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Nobody wants to actually get their hands dirty anymore.

• 18:22Henry Washington?

  A, you hustled and you found it. B, this is my favorite list for multifamily.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Mine too.

• 18:29Henry Washington?

  Mom and pop multifamily owners who own the property in their personal name or a trust, not in an LLC, that have either owned it for more than 20 years or have 100% equity. And I love just reaching out and talking to them, because even if you don't get a deal, you'll get one of the best conversations you've had in ages. They will talk your head off and tell you all the good stories.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Oh, baby. I can schmooze an 85-year-old couple all day long. They're my favorite person to buy a property from because they're so, they are, they're so fun to talk to. They've got, honestly, a lot of learning lessons about owning rental properties for 35 years and managing tenants.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Amelia's really good at this. And like you said earlier, people don't want to put in that work. They don't want to have the conversations. They don't want to spend an hour on the porch, shooting the [BLEEP], talking to Mr. and Mrs. Seller. And Amelia is so good at this. You've done this deal essentially three times.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Four times.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  You've done a very similar deal over and over and over again, because you're willing to do the things that everybody else, they look it up on Zillow, they call some random number, and then they don't answer and they leave it. And they're like, all right, done, not a deal.

• 19:39Henry Washington?

  Yeah, all right. Now we want to know the numbers.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So two of the units are long-term rentals. There's a one-bedroom, rents for $625. There's a three-bedroom that only rents for $700, but I have an amazing tenant in there that hopefully will stay forever. And then I have, this, this unit was a little bit of an experiment. It's a short-term rental, but again, this is in a town of 5,000 people. So I wasn't sure how this was going to perform, but it has been, on average, bringing in about $900 per month after all expenses. So I'm happy with that. My other exact mirror of this unit makes me $625. So yes, there's a few extra expenses with short-term rentals, but it is bringing in enough to make it worthwhile for me.

• 20:24Henry Washington?

  So 600, 700, 900, you're bringing in just over $2,225-ish dollars. What is it costing you to have this, this property?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I refinanced this back in 2023. I bought it in 2022, refinanced, end of 2023. My interest rate's 7%, which is high with my small local bank. I could get them down to 6% now, but it's honestly just not worth it for me to go through with the refinance. So 540 for the mortgage, 120 for insurance, and 230 for property tax. So my pity total is 890 per month on this. So my phantom cash flow, if you take 2,225, subtract 890, phantom cash flow is 1335 per month. However, if we go further in, for the full year of 2026 so far, I've collected about $16,000 in rent.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  My pity has been around $7,000. My utilities are 3,400 because I'm paying water and I'm paying heat for this building. Not only heat, but it has central AC, it has a central furnace, central AC. So year round, I'm paying a pretty hefty bill for, to cool or heat the whole building. And then about a thousand dollars in extra expenses for the Airbnb unit. So internet and some supplies. So my cash flow for the last eight months on this property is about 4,600, which equals out to about 580 per month. So I got Grace's duplex beat in that category by a tiny little bit, by a slipper.

• 21:56Henry Washington?

  This is awesome. 580 per month on a three unit building. That's fantastic cash flow.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  I've considered paying off the remaining mortgage, actually between 65 and 68,000 to have a completely paid off property, which would add about 540 back into my monthly cash flow for this, because that's what my mortgage is. But I need to determine, is that extra $6,000 a year worth it? Or would I rather just keep paying the mortgage and maybe ride it out? So it is fun to have the option, though. If I, if I ever wanted to, I know I could pull a lot of equity out of this property.

• 22:38Henry Washington?

  Yes, this is when real estate starts to get fun. When you get to a point where your leverage is in this kind of position, because now the conversation you're having with yourself isn't, I need to go buy another property to hit my goals. It's, is my dollar better spent buying another property? Or is my dollar better spent in my own portfolio, paying off this asset? Which option gives you the better cash on cash return? Right? And that's a fun place to be, because, man, it feels good to pay off a house. I've, I've paid off two so far. And man, it feels better doing that than it does when I buy a new one. All right. Thank you, Amelia. What a cool deal. I love the owner finance strategy. Excited to hear Grace's second deal, but we're going to

• 23:22Henry Washington?

  talk about that right after another break.

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• 28:17Henry Washington?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am here with investors Grace and Amelia. We are looking behind the curtain at their actual real estate deals, at their actual net cash flow, not the phantom cash flow that most people consider what cash flow is. And Grace has got a second deal for us. Grace, what you got?

• 28:37Speaker 02

  This one is boring, and I think that is the exact point that I'm trying to make.

• 28:41Henry Washington?

  My favorite.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was all into this property for maybe $100,000. It's worth 130. It was a perfect burr. It rents for 1,300 a month. And looking back at my last 12 months of expenses, besides my pity, I had one expense, a $50 business license. So this one cash flows $283 a month, like actual cash flow. And what is so interesting about this deal is I think that for a Midwestern, single-family home, people might be like, it's not even worth like having a tenant and all these things. And the point of it is, this is so stress-free.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  I've not gotten one maintenance call from this person. They are a great tenant, and I know that because we go in and I do have maintenance do furnace filters, so they lay eyes on it. And this person wants to be there for a long time. It's completely renovated property. And for $283 a month for something that is as close to passive as you can be, because we all know real estate's not passive, this feels really good. So if you are out there and you've got a low cash flow property, that's okay, as long as it matches the stress and the work involved, and it still matches your long-term goals. So nothing life-changing, nothing interesting, but a very typical, single-family deal in Iowa.

• 30:05Henry Washington?

  That's a fantastic point, right? Your, your reward needs to be worth the risk. And if you don't have a lot into it, and it's not taking a lot of effort, taking a little less cash flow isn't that big of a deal. Would you mind telling us how you found it and what you paid for it?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yes, I think I paid 79,000, and I was all in around 100. And I found this, it was an off-market deal that I had a Realtor looking out for me for pocket listings, because I had bought the house next door. And she brought this to me before they listed it. And they actually wanted way more, but I knew my number because I had bought the house next door, and it was like the same sucked house. And I followed up with her for like four or five months, like every month, like, hey, are they ready to accept my number? Are they ready to accept my number? Finally, they accepted it, got them paid out. I think it might have been an estate where the owner had passed. So really, it was just persistence and having a good network.

• 30:59Henry Washington?

  You said it's in good shape. Did you renovate it, or was it renovated prior to you buying it?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I renovated it. It was gross when I bought it. I completely renovated it. It's a really tiny house, so didn't take a ton. But yeah, I put the money into it, got the higher value, and then refinanced.

• 31:13Henry Washington?

  I love old boring real estate, man. This is the classic base hit play. I would do a million deals like this. One of my favorite types of deals, just set it and forget it. Easy peasy, standard, basic, single family home. Boring real estate. It doesn't make me fun to talk to at conferences because everybody's like, what new interesting things are you working on? And I'm like, I don't know. I bought a house, I renovated it and I have a tenant in it.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  It's the same thing.

• 31:37Henry Washington?

  Yeah. All right, now we're gonna wrap up with Amelia's second deal. I'm very, very interested based on what you've told me about your first one. So what do you got, Amelia?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  This one's interesting because spoiler alert, it's a negatively cash flowing, single family home now. I've owned this property now for five years. I purchased it in a package deal with a lot of equity already in it. The small local bank that I worked with allowed me to not put a full 20% down. That's kind of an interesting, fun fact about this. I bought it for $55,000 ish and it's on a five-year arm, which if you're not sure what that is, it's an adjustable rate mortgage. So that's the type of loan that my small local bank gives out. So every five years, the interest rate's gonna change. Well, we just came up on that and so the interest rate changed and it went up.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  And because of that, I chose to do a refinance on the property because I wanted to start working with a different lender that I actually like better. So I pulled out, I did a refinance, I had the property appraised. It appraised at $110,000. So I bought it at 55, never did a single thing to it. I've had the same inherited tenants in there for the last five years. It's a family. I don't know that I've ever even spent a dollar on maintenance for this property because they treat it like it's their own home. They take pride in it. They wanna stay there. It's really hard to find single family homes of this size because it's a three-bedroom, two-bathroom in this market.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  So they're never gonna leave unless I force them out, which why would I do that? So they're currently paying 825 in rent. My mortgage just went up to 600 because we pulled out 75% of equity of that $110,000. So 82,500. We had to pay off the original lender, which was 40,000. So we were left with about $40,000 of tax-free money. That's the biggest thing about a refinance is that is not income for me. And that's why I was willing to take this hit because they're paying 825, my mortgage is 600, my insurance is 160 and my property tax is 170.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  So every month, my expenses are $930, not including any maintenance if that ever comes up. So I'm actually negative $105 a month on this property.

• 34:04Henry Washington?

  Yeah, that seems like the big real estate no-no, but there is reasons to do this. I'm curious.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yes, so in my mind, I was thinking, even if I, I was before the refinance, probably making between $250 to $300 a month in cash flow on this property. I was able to make tax-free $42,000 off of this in the refinance. I got to pocket that money. Even at $250 a month in cash flow, it would have taken me 14 years to make $40,000 off of this property. And I had other plans for that money. I actually went and bought an 11-unit apartment building that's gonna make me much, much more than $250 a month and cover the negative $100 a month that I'm now eating off of this property.

• 34:52Henry Washington?

  Yes.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  That's why it's worth it.

• 34:55Henry Washington?

  This is called portfolio management, right? And once you have more than one unit, you now have a real estate portfolio. And if you have a portfolio, it doesn't matter what each individual property is doing. What matters is what is your portfolio producing as a whole? And how can you move the chess pieces around the individual properties, the loans, the tenants? How can you move them around to increase your overall performance? And so, yeah, you might not be cash flowing month over month on this particular property, but you took money out, you bought an 11-unit and your 11-unit produces enough income

• 35:38Henry Washington?

  to cover the loss that you're taking every month. So as a whole, you're in the green. Like, that's the point. And I don't think enough investors focus on portfolio management. I think a lot of investors, even after they build a sizable portfolio, are still very individually property-focused and tweaking your portfolio can make massive changes to your income.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I agree 100% and I'm actually do plan on raising the rent. People are usually reasonable. My plan is to actually take them, all of my expenses and say, look, I, I have to raise your rent because I'm no longer making money off of this property. I have very slowly and very small increment raised their rent over the last five years. I really don't see them giving me hardly any pushback. I'll probably raise it to 900, so I'll still be negative $30 a month in cash flow. Big deal. They probably won't really even bat an eye at that, they'll totally understand. And I know that if the tenants ever do move out, we'll do some cosmetic repairs and I

• 36:45Speaker 01

  can probably sell it for about 150K. So I still have lots of equity in that. That's the spread between what the appraisal came in at and what it's actually worth on the market. So still a great property, even though I'm not making monthly money off of it.

• 37:00Henry Washington?

  And I love the approach of showing the tenants. I'm just, I like to call the way I invest brutally honest investing in general. Like even when I'm making offers to, to sellers, I show them what I'm gonna make in profit. I show them everything about why I'm, why I'm making the offer I'm making. And I've just found that that's served me well. And it's, I've just found that if I just trust people to be decent people, people act decently. But we've done the same thing with tenants is to show them the numbers. And I'll pull the rental comps. I'll say, this is what things are renting for around here. This is where I'm gonna put you. I'm still charging you less than it would probably cost you to move somewhere else. If you want to look around, feel free, go and look. But here's all my expenses. Here's how much money I'm making and or not making.

• 37:45Henry Washington?

  And this is why I need to make rents the way I need to make rents. And I've literally never had a tenant be upset about it, not once.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Me either. I say it's because I don't even give them the opportunity. Like, I feel like sometimes people will like over-apologize or like open the door up for feedback. I just don't even open the door for feedback. I just kind of let them know this is what it is and that's that. Brutally honest investing.

• 38:10Henry Washington?

  Brutally honest investing. Just treat people like people, be a decent human being. And this business doesn't have to be as difficult, I think, as sometimes people make it out to be, or people think it is, but they don't actually have the experience.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  That's an understatement.

• 38:26Henry Washington?

  All right, any lessons from this property you wanna share with the audience?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  I would just say that similar to what we've talked about, tenants make or break a property. And if you've got great tenants, like I said, I haven't increased the rent very much at all on this property because that's worth it to me to keep them in there. If I had to go in and do a total turnover, it'd probably be $5,000 and that would eat all of my negative cash flow.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  And just, you know, getting, I think, just being around other investors that can talk to you about portfolio management. If you're really siloed, that can be a problem because you don't even realize all of the different levers that you have to pull. And like, like I said, the, the refinance is tax-free money because it's debt on the property. I learned that from another investor. So just, you know, having these conversations with other people that are also doing bigger deals in portfolio management.

• 39:23Henry Washington?

  That's a fantastic point. Like if you've got a portfolio, especially a sizable portfolio, being around other people who have either, who either have sizable portfolios or have had them in the past to see how they've maneuvered their portfolio can literally either save and or make you thousands upon thousands of dollars. Grace, any last words for the people?

• 39:43Speaker 02

  I was gonna say same. I would never have known that I could ask for 10% down if I hadn't heard somebody else say that on a podcast. So you don't know what you don't know, you don't know your own blind spots. So go, go borrow everybody else's knowledge before you have to learn it through a mistake yourself.

• 39:59Henry Washington?

  All right, well, this has been super fun, getting a look behind the curtain at real numbers on real real estate deals, not fake hype, social media wins, but actually what's happening. I mean, you heard them tell you about a deal that they're not making monthly cash flow on. That's why lessons like this are important. That's why you need to get around more investors so you can understand what it's truly like to operate a real estate business so that you can repeat these things on your own. Grace, Amelia, thank you so much for joining us. And can you let everyone know where they can find you?

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. It's Amelia Joe, R-E-I, Joe is just J-O. You can find the Wire community on Instagram at wire.community, wire has two I's, or wire.com. And then I'll let Grace tell you where you can find her.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  You can find me on Instagram at grace.investing.

• 40:52Henry Washington?

  All right, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the honesty and transparency. It is much appreciated. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please continue to follow the BiggerPockets Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. And as always, we'll see everybody on the next episode.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Thank you.

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